The growing ubiquity of locatable mobile devices such as mobile telephones, smart phones, cellular-enabled personal computers and GPS systems has created a demand for applications offering novel content on mobile devices. Known applications exist to provide games, social networking, navigation assistance, locating of points of interest, location tracking, advertising, and consumer and business-related services via a user's mobile device.
Developers of applications for mobile devices are often burdened by the complexity in designing applications which function effectively no matter the type of mobile device or the telecommunication carrier servicing the mobile device. An application typically needs to control mobile device functionality and retrieving data from a particular mobile device. However, effecting mobile device control and aggregating and maintaining data required for application functionality is often too complex and time consuming to make application development worthwhile and cost effective. It would be desirable to provide a system which facilitates the development and maintenance of applications for mobile devices by addressing issues of complexity in mobile device control and data collection.
Operating systems such as APPLE™ IOS™, MICROSOFT™ WINDOWS™, and ANDROID™ make use of badges to store application specific information. Badges are commonly used to relate application information to a user while the application is operating in a background state. For example, badge numbers may be displayed in a user interface on an application icon of an email client to convey the number of unread emails while the email client is operating in a background state. Applications typically have less functionality and correspondingly use less system resources operating in a background state (“in the background”) than in a foreground state (“in the foreground”).